Friday, August 11, 2017

How I love
the words that are the title of today’s post. They are taken from the
announcement of the event shown in today’s opening picture. In full the by-line
reads: For the love of dance and the
power to live passionately.

My week has
been one of diversions: first, a National Holiday and then a day spent
attending a University of the West Indies Open Campus Conference. The conference,
on the theme of Dominica’s indigenous race, the Kalinagos, comprised of one academic presentation after another. The passion was provided by brief guest
performances by Salybia Primary School children and Kalinago dancers.
Sorry, I was so enthralled that I missed
getting their photo!

Wednesday, August 2, 2017

Recently my days
have been spent making equipment for paper making. But I’m thirsting to get
back to painting. The first picture is where I left off over a month ago. Be
warned: my built up creative energy will explode on the first inspirational
model that comes my way.

In the
meantime: back to the workbench and the 24 blade beating roll that will be used
for making paper pulp.

Sunday, July 23, 2017

Too busy to write, but yesterday was my 74th
birthday and my present from my daughter Tania was tickets and a taxi for me
and the rest of my family to see my favourite performers on stage in the hit
Broadway Musical “Once on this Island”.

Nothing in
the world surpasses Dominica’s “Sixth
Form Sisserou Singers”. As the name suggests, the group was founded by high
school students back in 1994. Under the masterful direction of their musical
director, Pearl Christian, they have gone from strength to strength.

For this
presentation they were aided by Dominica’s Cultural Icon, Alwin Bully
(Director) and his daughter Sade Bully (Choreography). Dominica’s talented
Michelle Henderson was guest star and the show was stolen by the incredible
nine year old Beata (Beats) Vidal.

Saturday, July 15, 2017

Regardless
of earning my keep as a painter and sculptor of the human form, I have a poor
memory for faces.

Years ago,
unknowingly, I stood next to one of my models in a queue at the Post Office. We
had worked together for three months but it wasn’t until she gave me an
introductory tap on the shoulder that I recollected who she was.

I am always searching for my next inspirational model; an elusive task. But last week, while waiting to
cash at the supermarket, I was sure that I’d found her. When my turn came
to check-out I gave the smiling cashier my card and told her to contact me if ever
she should considered modelling.

Sunday, July 9, 2017

My first “Letter
to the Editor” was penned and published sixty years ago and I’ve continued
writing letters and articles for the press ever since. As my most recent touches
on creativity, it may be of interest to my followers. The subject is the
Caribbean Common Entrance Examination, a colonial hand-me down from the UK’s “Eleven
Plus”.

Life beyond
the Common Entrance

This week,
in the small minority of homes of children that won bursaries or scholarships
in the Common Entrance Examination there will be jubilation and resignation in
the homes of the majority that did not.

In this
commentary I want to give hope and assurance to those that the testing
methodology failed. To my mind, it was not the children that failed the exam
but the exam that failed the children. Furthermore, I maintain that grooming a
child from the age of nine for that kind of examination ranks as a form of
child abuse.

Sir
William Henry Hadow, an educational reformer who
in the 1920’s recommended the introduction of primary and secondary schools in
the UK, would doubtless agree. His
report, progressive for its day, argued that:

The primary school curriculum should be based on
the children's knowledge and experience, not on abstract generalisations or
theoretical principles. It should be thought of in terms of activity and
experience, rather than of knowledge to be acquired and facts to be stored. A good primary school is not a place of compulsory
instruction.

The
Caribbean Common Entrance Examination is a colonial hand-me-down from the UK’s
11 Plus. The 11 Plus Examination dates from 1945 when the Tripartite
Systemintroduced three types of secondary school, namely:grammar school,secondary technical
school andsecondary modern
school. It was abolished in the 1970’s when all
schools went Comprehensive.

As at this point in time Dominica does not have a similar Tripartite
System – all children progress to the same level of secondary
education – the only function of the Common Entrance Examination is as a financial incentive in
the form of bursaries and scholarships and as a first choice of secondary
school. It therefore beggars belief why we put children through the stress of
the examination at that tender age. Subsequent streaming can be determined from
regular class results.

As a
confidence builder it serves only a small percentage of pupils. For the
majority it serves as life’s first major “put-down”. Research has shown that it
takes ten “up-lifts” to counter one “put-down”. It is an early differentiating
step between the “have nots” and what a government minister recently termed as “those
who are in higher
positions in the social space”.

In
essence the Common
Entrance Examination is an Intelligence Test and as such it has the major failing
of all intelligence tests: it cannot measure creativity. Neither can it measure
the co-ordination between hand and eye, an essential attribute for all skilled
work. A creative answer is marked as nought. Hence, a dyslexic child hasn’t a cat
in hell’s chance and up to 15% of Afro-Caribbean children are dyslexic. To that
you can add at least 30% of pupils who are creatively rather than academically
inclined.

Research indicates that children are born with 98% the creative potential of genius. However, as they go through life, the figure falls dramatically. At the age of eight, the percentage has dropped to 32%. By the time they reach thirteen, peer pressure has brought it down to 10%, and by adulthood, conformity has reduced it to less than 2%. As individuals and as a nation, creativity is our most valuable resource. Creative thinking enhances academic qualifications but it is not necessarily dependent on them. Incidentally, the syllabuses of Dominica’s two most sought after secondary schools largely omit the Creative Arts.

Five years ago Dominica
piloted the Caribbean Primary Exit Assessment as a possible alternative to the
Common Entrance Examination. As some elements of the assessment are spread over
a period of years, rather than on the result of a one-off nerve-racking exam,
it offers some improvement. Nevertheless, it still misses the point: that
being, what’s the point if all children are eligible for the same level of
secondary education.

Let me end by offering hope to the majority that did not get
a high test score by confessing that sixty-five years ago I failed the 11 Plus,
and you can add that I am dyslexic. In those days dyslexia was not understood.
We were put down as being dumb; albeit that in the year leading up to the exam
I designed and built a model aircraft with a 30 inch wing span that could fly
the length of a football field!

The “sink” secondary modern school that I attended was later
closed by the government as failing. But it certainly did not fail me, and if I
had my life to live over I would beg to be sent back to the same school. A
remarkable bunch of teachers restored my confidence and in four years I rose
from bottom of the bottom stream to top of the top stream. Those teachers, none
of them highly academically qualified, were the first to recognise my potential
in the Arts and Engineering Design. I have since won national awards in both
fields.

On the other hand, my best friend Brian remained at the
bottom of the class and when he left school the only job open to him was
sweeping up in a bakery. Years later, on a visit to my home town in England, I
looked twice at the smartly dressed man walking towards me: it was Brian, also home
on a visit. Over the years he had progressed from sweeper to Master Baker. He
then progressed to hotel catering and when we met he was the Head Pastry Chef
at one of Australia’s top hotels. As he said: they tried to teach me everything
at school but missed the one thing that I’m good at!

Had Leonardo Da Vinci sat the
Common Entrance Examination 500 years ago, this is what his answer paper might have
looked like – he was seriously dyslexic!

Sunday, July 2, 2017

It is twenty
years since I last worked in pastel, and then only spasmodically. Since Degas
(1834-1917) and Whistler (1834-1903) pastel has suffered a similar fate to
water colour: its innate vibrancy has been reduced to timidity. On that score,
I am determined to turn the tables.

The next
step is to make my own pastels as my requirements are different to what’s on
the market, both in colour, tonal range and hardness. Besides, neither paper nor
pastels are available off the shelf on my island.

The first
picture shows my last pastel sketch from twenty year ago. It is followed by the
one I made, on the spur of the moment, the day before yesterday. My model,
expecting my usual water colour washes, was impressed. Or at least that is what
I took her “hmm” to mean. But I have a long way to go to get back to where I
was twenty years ago and even further, to move forward with vengeance.

Sunday, June 25, 2017

My daughter
recently bought me a copy of Enrique Martínez
Celaya’s Collected Writings &
Interviews, 1990-2010. It was not the book that I had sent her in search of
but she did her best in finding an alternative that she thought “looked like me”.
Thanks Tania!

I had never heard of Enrique Martínez Celaya and I’m sure he’s never heard of
me. As artists we have a few things in common: we both hail from the Caribbean
(Cuba for him and Dominica for me); we both paint and sculpt and we both share
our thoughts through speech and the written word.

But there the similarity ends: he veers
towards the conceptual while I cling to the representational; his thoughts are
complex and mine are simple; he is internationally known and in demand, whereas
I am not.

He says: “I’m after work so empty yet
so dense that in engaging it, the act of becoming is generated”.

I say: I want my work to have the
passionate feeling of making love.

I will let our respective work speak
for itself. First, two of mine at random...

Monday, June 19, 2017

Due to what
was thirty years later diagnosed as dyslexia, until the age of five I had no
means of speech – even the pronunciation of my name eluded me. As my brother once sarcastically remarked: he’s made up for it since!

To prove his
point I’ve given two talks in two days. The first was to visiting students from
the States and the second, to Dominica’s Prison Officers. For the students, the
venue was my studio and the theme my work as a painter and sculptor. For the
prison officers, the venue was the prison and the theme dyslexia: a relevant
topic as research shows that 40% of prisoners are dyslexic.

I’m an old
hand at working with prisoners. In the early 1980’s I did regular Thursday
afternoon sessions at Road Town Prison in the British Virgin Islands. Those were the days of the old prison that is shown in the opening illustration.

For the visiting
students I rounded off my talk with a sketch of one of the participants. While
sketching I kept up a running commentary, so I’m still talking to make up for
lost time!

Thursday, June 15, 2017

The above drawing is taken from my book Caribbean Sketches. It shows women carry bungles
of sugar cane on the River Antoine Estate, Grenada.

It is mostly women that carry the heavy bungles of sugar
cane from the fields to the mill. The bungles are hoisted shoulder high and then
finally thrown down the trough that leads to the rollers – rollers that for
hundreds of years have been turned by a huge waterwheel. What strength, I could
barely lift one of the bungles. Take my advice: don’t ever pick a fight with a
Grenadian woman!

Bagasseis the residue left after
sugar cane has been crushed and it is from this that I am making paper. I have
spent my day chopping, boiling and shredding a batch.

Friday, June 9, 2017

In the far corner of our land, are the
remains of an old sugar works and rum distillery. The river provided the pure
water and the surrounding hillsides provided the cane. Now only the old walls
stand: the waterwheel and boiling coppers are no more. Two hundred years ago
trash from the sugar cane was used to fire the coppers that converted the cane
juice into rum.

Sugar cane still grows to within a few
yards from my studio but alas the bottle of rum from which I pour my sundowner does
not have Antrim Estate on the label. However, a different end product from the
same raw ingredients may soon have Antrim Studio as its watermark. I refer to
paper.

The first picture shows sugar cane
growing alongside my studio and the second, a sample sheet of paper from the
same growth of cane. The paper has a faint musky scent; perhaps that's a trace of aged Antrim Rum percolating through!

Friday, June 2, 2017

It has
happened to us all. We are jolted by the unexpected glimpse of our
reflection in a shop window and ask: is that me?

The same
goes for my paintings. After a session I select what I perceive to be the best
and the remainder are put to one side. I stress “put to one side” for I learnt
long ago never to discard. I also keep computer images of all my paintings.
Sometimes, when searching through the thumb nails of these images I hit upon
one that gives me a jolt. I enlarge it to full screen and ask: did I paint that?

Why I cast today’s
painting to one side, goodness only knows. In retrospect it says all that I’ve
ever wanted to say. In other words, it leaves more unsaid than what is said.

It takes a
model as inspirational as Annabelle to work that kind of magic.

Sunday, May 28, 2017

When
landscapes, townscapes and seascapes were my means of survival, I strove to be
lyrical: now, with the figure, I strive
to be passionate.

Either way,
my approach is the same. I have to confront the real thing, be it a tree or my model, and I have to
make my statement at the speed of light. I remember dodging a shower of rain
for this painting of Halifax parish church.

During my
engineering apprenticeship days I took a short cut through the church grounds
to get to work. On the floor of the porch is the gravestone to a remarkable man
that fathered 32 children. A feat made all the more notable as he was away fighting
the wars for 18 years! At least those numbers are to the best of my memory. On
reading this, I am sure that my brother, who still lives within a few miles of
the church, will be down there with his camera to correct my inaccuracies.

The soldier’s
amazing feat of strength and stamina reminds me of a statement made by Winston
Churchill. On reading in the Times that
a pensioner had made sexually advances to young lady in Hyde Park in freezing
cold weather, he remarked to his colleague on the front bench: “Makes you proud to be an
Englishman”.

Tuesday, May 23, 2017

What may
seem to be the sales solution for a painter and sculptor working from a studio
hidden within the idyllic interior of a remote Caribbean island; isn’t. I refer
to selling art on-line.

There are
scores of sites, tens of thousands of artists and millions - yes, millions – of
images. I’ve tried them all, from the user friendly low key to the aloof curated
high key. In between the two are the shopping baskets of the out and out
commercial that can offer my coy nudes as shower curtains, duvet covers, and
beach bags. Whichever way, I was better off on the pavements of France or beneath
a palm tree in the Virgin Islands.

But then
again, I do not want to “accessorize your lifestyle” as one on-line site puts
it. I just want to share my passion for what I perceive to be profound and
beautiful. The MA’s in History of Art curators don’t get it. But occasionally, someone
like Anna, who commented on my last post, does.

Today’s
picture (in the beauty going begging category) is a portrait bust that I made three
years ago of my poetic model Jessica.

As the mid-day
temperature here in Dominica is way into the 90’s, I’ll mull over the vicissitudes
of an artists’ life while walking down to the river and taking a dip in our bathing hole.

Wednesday, May 17, 2017

Photographers
of the nude invariably place their models in derelict buildings or on idyllic
sea shores and most painters of the nude allow their subjects the comfort of cushioned
interiors.

In contrast,
my paintings of the nude favour the bare minimum, both in setting and
technique. I offer no distractions and I do not patronise the viewer with
detailed finish. What I do offer, through my paintings and these diary pages,
is an invitation to enter into the creative process.

If I’m repetitive;
so be it: if I bore you; hard lines. I know of no other way of finding what I’m
searching for. And if per chance – usually by accident rather than intent – I succeed,
there is then the difficulty of seducing you, the recipient, by way of a
language that you can learn to understand.

About the Artist

50 years ago I gave up a secure job in engineering design and declared myself as an artist on the pavements of France. My roving painting career gathered momentum in the 1970’s when, with my wife and small daughter, I sailed at 30ft ketch from England to the Caribbean. Thereafter the islands became my adopted home.
Like the Renaissance artists before me, necessity has made me a man of many parts: painter, sculptor, print maker, publisher, book illustrator, postage stamp designer, writer, poet, broadcaster, film maker, engineer, inventor, architect, boat builder, sailor and adventurer. My studios have ranged from a shack alongside an idyllic cove in the Virgin Islands to a cavernous church assembly hall in the North of England. My present studio is located on the lush island of Dominica.
In the 1990’s I published a daily diary on the internet that followed my work as a painter and sculptor. Schools and colleges throughout the world accessed the site. My current diary pages are followed by artists in over 50 countries.

Diary excerpts from long ago

July 22nd 2000

With my family I arrived in England five years ago. The first two years were spent working on the building and applying for Arts Council lottery funding. Alas, the Council considered figurative sculpture elitist and of no interest to the general public.

After three years our savings were spent and in desperation I began doing what I came to England to do: to work as a sculptor. In our impoverished state the odds were against us. A year passed with not a single commission and not a penny of income. Then the tide turned. If two years ago it had been predicted that my studio would today be bursting at the seams with work, I would have dismissed the notion as a complete fallacy.

NHS Figures

Getting ready to start a piece of work is often more time consuming that actually doing the job itself. Most of last week was spent searching for models, now I have to prepare the clay and set up the turn-tables. But even those tasks are more visibly productive than making the telephone calls and writing the letters.

One of the pleasanter non-creative tasks is meeting people. First time visitors to the studio are often overwhelmed at seeing sculpture in the making. Showing them around gives me a very positive feeling for I know that from then on they will see sculpture with a new understanding.

Plaster Mold

Sculpture for the City of Leeds

The end result for those of us working in the visual arts is something that is capable of being seen. In the long term the success of a piece of work is, to a large degree, measured by how many people look at it. But in the beginning the work cannot be seen by anyone on the outside. It exists only in the mind's eye of the artist. That is where the figures for Leeds have been for the last three months. During that period there hasn't been a day - or night - when I haven't worked upon them. I've moved them through every position imaginable: standing, sitting, leaning, squatting, huddled together, set apart. I've added figures and switched males for females. My couple - for that's what I finished up with - then gave birth to a child. The toddler peeps at the Frenchman playing boules from behind his/her mother's skirt. The work has been created and torn apart a hundred times. But as yet I haven't set down anything on paper or built up anything in clay. My successes and failures have gone unseen. And as much as I want to open up the creative process through these diary pages, the first stage is too elusive be put into words.

Trina's Portrait

"Have you nearly finished, my neck aches". After five minutes Trina, my youngest daughter, has had enough of modelling. Actually her impatience works to my advantage. I know I have to work fast, and working without a second to spare usually produces my best work. I started today's session started by wiping out half a day's work. I had previously added her hair but the result didn't please me. I had invented a head of hair and not paid close enough attention to the real head of hair. The first attempt looked like something out of a hairdresser's window. Maybe that is why Trina liked it the best!

So much to learn

In this day and age there is little in the way of guidance for aspiring sculptors. There are no schools that teach the disciplines as fully as they were taught a hundred years ago, there are few books and precious few masters alive to train the next generation. One must learn as best one can. Ton after ton of clay must pass through the sculptor's hands and hour upon hour must be spent working from the live model. It isn't easy and a lifetime isn't long enough to learn all that must be learnt. There is nothing more difficult to model convincingly than the human hand. If the hand is done well the observer doesn't stop to count the fingers.

Church Window Layout

In between modelling sessions I have been drawing the millennium church window full size. This will help me to come to terms with the daunting scale of depicting Christ Triumphant. My Christ Triumphant unleashing a flock of doves has been rejected. The church has requested that I keep to the more familiar vision of Christ with arms beckoning. At least my model will be pleased that he hasn't to contort himself into that pose anymore. Michelangelo had his fair share of rejections from Church Councils. Once, in an attempt to please, he went so far as to devise a statue that incorporated a barber's shop within the figure’s lower extremities and - as a master-stroke - put a chimney coming out of its head!

My original concept

Mould Divisions

Three-dimensional jigsaw puzzles are nothing new: sculptors have been doing them for hundreds of years. But this is no game. The problem is mind boggling. Somehow, the three standing figures have to be divided into sections of a mould. The seams are made with lengths of brass shim that are pressed into the clay of the figures. Eventually the clay will be covered with plaster to form what is called a waste mould. At the moment this may sound very confusing but over the next couple of months you will learn a lot about the process. This is the most complex mould that I have ever made and one to test my ingenuity. I was awake thinking about it at three o'clock this morning. If I get it wrong the figures will be entombed like a mummy. As I work I imagine the skilled moulders of earlier times critically looking down on me and laying bets on the outcome of my work.

30th June 2000

I've managed to dodge colds all winter. Just my luck that I get one now! This I could have done without. Maybe if I worked in advertising or accountancy I'd have taken the day off and stayed in bed, but in this line of work you don't even think of it. The molds have to be at the foundry in two weeks and at the foundry they will be. The picture shows Denise - on her one day off from college - chipping away at the waste mould of Samantha. In the background Richard, my assistant, is working on the mold for the Bond Court figures.

4th July 2000

So much depends on the model, and with models I have always been fortunate. Elizabeth has dedicated herself to the task and that dedication shines through in the finished work. The pose has been painfully difficult but she's never complained. Furthermore, she's fitted the modelling in between moving house, looking after her family and driving the truck for her husband’s business. She always shown up on time and has never missed a session. Thanks Elizabeth. In turn I've given my best. It's all I can do.

Portrait Demonstration - Megan

For the Allen Gallery I did two demonstration portrait sessions before a live audience and television. Two models on consecutive days, starting at ten in the morning and finishing at four in the afternoon with an hour for lunch. The models, Megan and Jag, were the winners of a primary school art competition. Their prize was a portrait session. A portrait from start to finish in no more than five hours, before an inquisitive audience and the press, is a tall order. I doubt if there are many sculptors that would dare to take it on. I did and here are the results. Thanks Megan and Jag, for making it possible.

Portrait Demonstration - Jag

Patina

It seems that a successful patina, like a good watercolour, is the result of a happy accident. On my fourth attempt Xander's bust turned out to perfection. It in fact put Trina's in the shade and gave me a hard act to follow on the torso. I can well imagine that, if I keep at it, in twenty years I'll be experienced enough to understand every subtle shade of the business. Just like the episode of Pooter painting the bath in "The Diary of a Nobody" I got quite carried away with applying patinas. Switching from bronze to the plaster I gave Elizabeth’s figure a coat of burnt umber.

Henry Moor Institute

I got quite a shock today on visiting the current exhibition at the Henry Moor Institute in Leeds. The gallery was actually thronged with real people. By real people, I mean those you'd expect to see in everyday life. Usually the only sign of human life is the ever present black shirt attendants. The exhibition of portrait busts is aptly titled "Return to Life". I hope that the attendance figures don't scare off the institute from ever doing such a show again. Being popular to the masses is not exactly in their remit. It would have been nice to have included a photograph so as to encourage even more of the public at large to visit this excellent presentation. I asked a black-shirt but was told that photography is strictly forbidden.

A Ray of West Indian Sunshine

On Saturday I attended a Postgraduate Seminar on Portraiture at the Henry Moore Institute. Even at its most informal, events at the Institute are lodged at the higher end of the scholastic scale. As such its presentations are totally at odds with my premise that: with sculpture, as with sex, intellectual thought only screws things up. For this particular seminar it was even doubtful if I would be allowed in. As with many working sculptors, my academic education amounts to no more than secondary modern school. But Saturday turned out to be a rare and rewarding day. To find a West Indian in the audience is a rarity, even rarer to find that - my God - she's one of the presenters! Charmaine Nelson brought a wonderful ray of Jamaican sunshine into a lecture room that normally has the feel of an Icelandic family mausoleum. Her paper "White Marble, Black Bodies and the Fear of the Invisible Negro: Signifying Blackness in mid-Nineteenth-Century Neoclassical Sculpture" wonderfully linked with all that I have been working for over the years in my adopted Caribbean. Charmaine, for the first time in five years of lectures, you made me miss my train home. Thanks!

At a fleeting glance

Waldemar Januszczak, art critic for the Sunday Times, wrote recently about painting quickly. Both as painter and sculptor, the faster I work the better. What is seen at a glance has to be captured in a moment. A climax cannot be sustained forever. But as Januszczat says: "Painting quickly is still seen in academic circles as a threat to civilization. Those artists who appear to breeze in and do it without a proper amount of effort still seem to us to be breaking all the rules. With other art forms the ability to work quickly is recognised as a sign of genius but a quick painter remains (alas) a slap happy painter." Alas, a slap-happy painter and sculptor I remain. This little sketch was completed on the run in Grenada's market place.